Beneath an Unfamiliar Ceiling
by Firestar9mm
Summary: For all the times I called him baka...


Beneath an Unfamiliar Ceiling  
  
*****  
  
"His cerebellum?" Misato asked incredulously, as if Ritsuko had suggested that Shinji should have had his Eva do the hokey pokey. "Don't you mean his heart?"  
  
*****  
  
The floor. Ceiling-staring central.   
  
Shinji was sitting next to his belongings, which were arranged in a forlorn pyramid on the cool floor. A mid-sized box, crowned with a box of equal size at a dizzy angle. Teetering perilously at the top of the unstable structure was a smaller box. A large box sat a distance across the floor like a lone sentinel, near which his bag huddled like a cat seeking shelter from a storm.  
  
Shinji Ikari's whole life was in those boxes and that bag. It seemed, the Third Child thought with a short expulsion of air through his nose, that there should have been more.  
  
Shinji curled on the bed that had been designated, like the room, as his. It was his--the room, the bed, the window, the sign on the door that bore the legend, "Shin-chan's Room". "Welcome home," Misato had said.  
  
Still, the room felt alien. Shinji curled into an almost fetal position, huddling around his SDAT like it was the last fire at the end of the world.  
  
Restless, he rolled onto his back. The ceiling didn't look quite as far away from here. Even so, to him it could have been the surface of the moon through the darkness. Unfamiliar terrain. Cold. Alien. Like the eyes of his father when they fell upon him...  
  
The Third Child squeezed his eyes shut till he could feel them pressed against the lids that shielded them. He squirmed, rolling onto his side again, as if trying to escape his skin. No matter how he tossed and turned, he found that wherever he moved the questions had gotten there first and were waiting for him.   
  
What sort of sin could someone commit to warrant such dispassion from someone? What could a child possibly do that was so terrible even his own father would not look upon him?  
  
What had happened to unconditional love, and what had he, Shinji, done to be undeserving of it?  
  
As he ran fingers over the ever-unanswered question of why his father hated him, Shinji felt rising in himself an answering anger, a hatred not hot, not bright, but rather so cold and sharp that it scraped the inside of his throat.   
  
In the tangle of his thoughts, his father's face gradually melted into the blank-canvas face of Rei Ayanami. What had she done to elicit even the meager amount of compassion and soft words from his father? What made her so infallible? What had she done to earn Gendo Ikari's respect? Could it be duplicated?  
  
Thoughts of Rei Ayanami led to thoughts of her form shrouded with bandages, her mewls of pain. Perhaps she had a modicum of sympathy from Dad, but it wouldn't--almost didn't--stop him from sending her out again, torn, bleeding, in that metal monster. Misato and Ritsuko had hinted that Rei's condition was a result of the Eva--that something had gone horribly awry.  
  
It had also been mentioned that it had taken Rei seven whole months to synchronize with her Eva. Why had he been able to synchronize with Unit 01 so easily?  
  
Well, "easily" wasn't really the correct word for the situation, but for lack of a better one it was all Shinji's exhausted mind could come up with. He could still feel phantom pain in his left arm, still feel the grip of the angel as it wrenched and twisted.  
  
Misato had told him tbat what he'd done was "noble", that he should be proud. Did she even know how chillingly wrong she was? He should be proud? Proud of what? Of passing out in LCL, of cowering from the fight, of almost letting Rei take on the battle? He had had nothing to do with the outcome of the fight! The angel could have feasted on the bones of the Eva, the world could have ended, there could have been a Third Impact, and he would have known nothing of it!  
  
Misato was confused, anyway--she felt totally for his dissonance with his father and was now leading a one-woman crusade to "save" him.  
  
That was what this apartment thing was all about, wasn't it? To save him. From Dad, from the angels, from himself. As she'd held the phone far away from her ear, listening to Ritsuko scream about orders and outrage and shame, he had been silent. He'd let Misato believe she had rescued him--he would never tell her that he'd already seen his destiny, his life and death unexpected, in that huge liquid eye.  
  
He had remembered the chill in the shadow of that huge hand, the only thing in the entire world, in his entire life, that had ever moved to protect him. That thought, before anything else, of HIM. This he had remembered when he had slid his eyes over, the rest of him following as if on a taut and jerking chain, to see himself reflected in that enormous eye.   
  
He had seen it all there, and no one would ever know.  
  
Was it destiny? His destiny, to wallow in blood and pain and suffering? Why had he been BORN if it was just for this?  
  
He didn't want to be a hero.  
  
Once again rolling over onto his back, he stared once again at the cold landscape of ceiling above his head, with shrinking confidence in its ability to protect him. Glimpses of the death eye and of Rei's skin covered in gauze, patched so no one noticed the contrast of white on white, flashed behind his eyes.  
  
He remembered how he had felt stepping over the threshold of Misato's apartment. There had been no g-force, no resistance at all, nothing trying to keep him out. It hadn't felt at all abnormal. It hadn't felt like anything.  
  
That is, until Misato had said, "Welcome home," with the warmth of turning leaves and one o'clock sunshine and hot chocolate in her voice.   
  
"I...I'm home." He said the words softly again, as if speaking too loudly would chase the feeling away. For better or for worse, this was his home now. If the ceiling was unfamiliar, the only cure was time.  
  
For a brief, shining moment, he was simply Shinji--not Gendo Ikari's son, not the Third Child. He breathed out softly, trying not to disturb the feeling.  
  
The shadows on the ceiling were still; the longer you looked, the more shapes you could pick out.  
  
Shinji closed his eyes and allowed the music piping through his SDAT to lull him slowly to sleep.  
  
*****  
  
Please, please read and review! I am craving feedback on this, because it's my first posting since my stupid computer imploded--THREE WEEKS AGO! It's been like starving.   
  
Some technical stuff: The sign on Shinji's door, in the anime, reads "Shinji's Lovely Suite" and in the manga simply reads "Shin-Chan's Room. I didn't notice the discrepancy till today. There might be a couple more mistakes. And I think I've made Shinji a little omniscient, knowing more than he should at that point in either series, but I was operating from one video and three manga so if I got a little muddled I apologize and hope people like it anyway. I'm already re-obsessed with this series--I've redone my wall, drawn charcoals of Shinji, searched for my Rei screen-print blouse, received two dares to dress up like Asuka for Halloween (*EVIL SMIRK*) Bets?  
  
*happy sigh...* My first Eva, complete. I hope everyone likes it. I worked really hard on it, and this is why: He will never read this, but this story is dedicated to my best male friend in all the world. He is the other half of my brain, and he recently left for college. He was Tenchi to my Ayeka, Van to my Merle, Ash to my Misty, Li to my Meilin, Shinji to my Asuka. (the list goes on.) He made fun of me for loving anime, but put up with my voices and complaints, my Dorothy outfit and my Asuka hair, with me calling him baka and swearing in an inventive mix of Japanese and German whenever he beat me at "Mario Party". He offered to watch "Perfect Blue" with me after Madonna used it on her tour (which we went to TWICE!!!) and bought me "Project A-Ko Cinderella Rhapsody" for my birthday. He took me all the extra way to Times Square so we could look for an NGE manga (which incidentally we did not find that day). He reminds me a LOT of Shinji, and I recently saw the connection while watching the first video, thinking of him under some unknown ceiling in cinder block halls.  
  
So even though he will never read this, and I will deny ever having said it: Third Child, I miss you. May the angels protect you and sadness forget you, and I can't wait for the Bjork concert, not just to hear her sing "Hidden Place" and "Pagan Poetry", but to see you. The Saturday night highways aren't the same without you.   
  



End file.
